The Shameful Effects of Reading a Romance, 1760

Isabella reporting,

Eighteenth-century women enjoyed reading romances. Just like many of their romance-reading sisters today, they were often ridiculed for doing so.

But while the sighing, novel-reading miss was an easy target, there were also sterner critics who went much farther than simply dismissing romances as a waste of time. To them, reading romantic fiction corrupted virtuous women, and made them more susceptible to seduction and ruin. It's no surprise that the loudest voices were male, certain that female readers needed protecting because they did not possess the ability to read critically or to differentiate between fiction and reality.

Conduct books warned against the dangers of the roman d'amour. In the popular Manuel de la toilette & de la mode by Conrad Salomon Walther, published in 1771, the author claimed that romantic novels played to "the depravity of the reader." Not surprisingly, he disapproved of honest women reading such books: "There are books that one must not read in order to remain virtuous and out of respect for public opinion, which quite correctly esteems that a young woman should remain ignorant about certain things."

All of which explains the state of the young woman, left. Despite her noble intentions to higher learning indicated by the globe and scholarly books on the table, she has succumbed to reading a ::horrors:: romantic novel. Still open beside her, this book has reduced her to a near-swoon, flushed, limp, and spent, with her clothes in disarray. The book has debauched her as surely as a real lover might, here in the intimacy of her own bedchamber. Even her little dog in his brocade kennel seems exhausted by so much literary passion.

Of course this painting isn't a warning, but a sly exaggeration. It's a scene intended to titillate, not serve as a cautionary tale. The artist, Pierre-Antoine Baudoin, painted many such knowing pictures, and this was probably intended to amuse a worldly male patron. Either way, the message is still clear: romance novels are powerful stuff. But we knew that all along, didn't we?

Above: La Lecture, by Pierre-Antoine Baudoin, c. 1760. Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris.

NHG Library features Vauxhall Gardens: A History

Loretta reports:

I’ve been wanting to write about this book ever since I bought it.  The trouble is, we try to keep these posts short, and it’s hard (for me, at any rate) to keep from raving endlessly.  In a nutshell, Vauxhall Gardens: a History, is a wonderfully exhaustive study of Lambeth's famous pleasure gardens, from their beginnings in 1661 as the New Spring Gardens to their demise 200 years later.

Since I hadn't needed to research it, what I knew about Vauxhall was mainly what I’d gleaned from reading traditional Regency romances.  I've now learned how much more Vauxhall had to offer in the Regency than taking chances with rakes in dark walks or eating thin ham or dancing at a masquerade.

Here’s a description of the first Vauxhall appearance of Madame Saqui, the tight and slack rope performer, in 1816:

"[She ascended] to a considerable elevation, and running with wonderful velocity upon a rope extending half down one of the walks, in the face of a tempest of fireworks, and a change of blue lights, which suddenly converted the shades of evening to the brightness of noon.”

The book includes an evocative illustration of this feat amid the "tempest of fireworks."  You'll find as well engravings of other garden attractions, like the Submarine Cave, balloon ascents (and catastrophes), fetes, and performers.  Among other wonderful images is Louis Jullien holding an umbrella while he sings for a packed audience, all under umbrellas.  As is the orchestra.

View online here

If you want to learn about all the “modern” art that was on display, or see what a season ticket looked like, or learn when Paganini played there, or find out when the Hermitage finally got its hermit, this is the book for you.  The appendices offer the kinds of minutiae Nerdy History Persons dote upon:  detailed catalog of the paintings and what became of them, a chronology of important events, and—be still my heart—maps of the gardens, with locations of various buildings and features, for 1742, 1751, 1818, and 1850.

With the book’s help, I was able to locate some of the images, which you can find on our Pinterest Pages here, here, and here.

Vauxhall broadside courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 US

Even More About Buckskin Breeches

Isabella reporting,

I've written twice before (here and here) about buckskin breeches, the favorite comfortable and stylish breeches of choice for 18th-early19th c. males, from stable-boys to the sporting noblemen. The photographs illustrating those blog posts show breeches that were modern replicas of ones worn in the 1770s, and made by hand using 18th c. methods as part of the historic trades program of Colonial Williamsburg.

On one of the hottest days of this past summer, I had the opportunity to chat with the maker of those breeches. Jay Howlett is a journeyman saddler in CW's historic trades program, and is not only skilled in working with leather, but also possesses the tailoring necessary to make buckskin breeches. While I was close to expiring from the steamy heat of Tidewater Virginia, Jay was perfectly at ease seated on a stool beneath a tree in 18th c. attire, making the most of the dappled sunlight while he stitched and chatted with visitors. His project that day was a pair of breeches that were a commission for an Englishman who would be wearing them for Regency-era re-enactments. The difference between the buckskin breeches worn by gentlemen in 1770 and 1810 would have been slight; the later ones would likely have a higher rise and waist to reflect the changing styles in menswear as waistcoats became shorter and coats were cut away in the front.

While leather breeches were made from hides ranging from sheepskin to moose, this pair was in fact

traditional deerskin. As Jay explained, buckskin can be made from any leather. "Bucking" is the a mechanical process that breaks the grain surface and produces a soft, irregular nap. The skin was incredibly soft, almost like modern chamois. Processing the deerskin to achieve this would been an involved process in the 18th c.. A paste of cod liver oil and bran was spread on the skins. Then the skins were stacked, creating heat and oxidation that transformed the surfaces. Finally the skins were were rubbed with stiff wire brushes to remove the rough outer surface, revealing the softer leather beneath.

Jay estimated that it takes him about thirty hours to make a pair of breeches. I was impressed by the care that he put into the seams, matching and enclosing all edges. Not only would this have made a stronger seam, but a more comfortable one as well, smooth and without raw edges. His seams were a neat twelve stitches to the inch - though Jay said he'd seen an original 18th c. pair that was sewn at an astonishing gauge of twenty-five stitches to the inch!

Photographs copyright Susan Holloway Scott.

Breakfast Links: Week of September 2, 2013

Back to school, and back to Breakfast Links - our tastiest links to other blogs, sites, articles, and images, all gathered fresh for you each week from around the Twitterverse.
• Beyond the grave: diagnosing a 10th c. Viking poet and warrior who had a legendarily hard head.
• A lady typist's ghost on Wall Street, 1901.
• Turning heads in 1916 & 1917: fashionable images from the Bellas Hess & Co catalogue.
• Tight-ropes over the Thames: a precarious history.
• This week in 1813, Lord Byron cannot bear to give up Annabella Milbanke, and writes a very long letter to her to prove it.
• The ritual of the morning toilette is another of Louis XIV's contributions to fashion.
• The inspiration Jane Austen found in Chawton.
• "Am I too square?" How a boy asked a girl to dance in 1955.
• How to elope in style, 1793.
• New York's 1883 Hotel Gerlach boasted a rooftop kennel with treadmill, stained woodwork, and "green walls with pictures hung."
• Emily Dickinson's personal collection of sheet music.
• "Sorry-for-sin Coupard": 20 of the worst and 20 of the most strangely pleasant Puritan names.
• Inside Manchester's historic Victoria Baths.
• "You will then know how to talke to me": in 1864, an ex-slave wrote to his former owner and told her he was returning with an army to rescue his children.
• Not for faint-hearted cooks: 18th c. recipe for potting a wild fowl.
• Rare color photographs of Imperial Russia, 1909-1915.
• A colonial Virgina tale of sex and betrayal: Bartholomew Dandridge sets a trap, c 1760.
• Ten buildings that survived the Great Fire of London in 1666.
• The Eidophusikon, an 18th c. animated miniature theatre which "held the mirror up to nature."
• It's a secret to everyone: a tiny landscape painting hidden until you bend the pages of this 19th c. book.
• Medford, MA home recognized for bringing to life the history of slavery in colonial Massachusetts.
• Why you should visit the Times Square Visitor Center (even if you live in New York.)
• The infamous Hellfire Club is reduced to a 19th c. tourist attraction in West Wycombe.
• Goat suet & goose grease are some of the unusual ingredients for 18th c. lip salves and other beauty products.
• A very sympathetic husband suffers from male morning sickness and labor pains, c 1690.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for updates daily.

Casual Friday: Late Victorian Travel Films

Courtesy Library of Congress

Loretta reports:

Some early travel films, set to rather sad music.  Yes, as some of the YouTube comments point out, everyone in these films is dead.  However, those people were very much alive when they were being filmed.  So you might wish to choose your own music to accompany it—and have fun, as I did, trying to guess the locales.  I was delightfully surprised to see early film footage of a locale featured in Mr. Impossible.